I've been very interested in the rather scientific looking Octave Plateau Voyetra 8 rack for some years now - does anyone have a demo of this beasty in action along with any piccies of it's guts along with any user/owner opinions??

My other long time wishes for classic gear in the studio are:

An original E-mu EIII - even if it's not working - I can fix it!PPG Wave 2.3 - same again!Fairlight CMI - this one frustrates me... FGtH's Fairlight has been residing in a non working state for many years now in the museum section of my favourite music shop - one of these day's Andy will accept an offer of mine and I can restore it back to working life ..... actually I will never forget one day in the early 90s we loaded a grubby 8" floppy into this beast (it worked then!!) marked TT and after several frustrating minutes of trying to work out how to load samples out came the entire bass line of Two Tribes!!!

Here is a piccy from a Tone Tweakers sale last year to jog your memories...

Yep, early/mid New Order is usually the reference for Voyetra 8 listening, check the Low Life album (and possibly Brotherhood but not 100% sure on that one).Apparently the V8 was their main synth during that period.

I definitely recommend an EIII, I had one 7 or 8 years back, loved it (but sold it when downscaling prior to a move abroad).Another interesting sampler to keep an eye out for is a Simmons SDX, similar to the EIII in the way that it's a 16-bit sampler with analogue (resonant) filters, up to 8Mb RAM, individual voice outputs and SCSI but with the benefit of graphical editing, more EGs & LFOs and even more exclusivity

Nice machine although the interface is crummy. A few quirks (like XLR midi plug),weighs a ton, needs space due to heat output, noisy fan,hard to repair ( Peter Lanzilotta in NY) and a # of revisions, some of which are impossible to work on. A few good resources on the web. If you have specific questions I'll do my best to answer...

i'm told the buggles used it too. been after one for bloody years but never found one... the rare times they come up they don;t have midi and have some sort of propriaetry keyboard with them, which pushes the price and the space needed up, and the usefullness down

Wow, you must be really unlucky. Most Voyetras were retrofitted for midi ( Although with XLR cabling rather than the standatd midi plug). Never had a chance to try the VPK ( there were at least two versions); was told by several people who had them not to bother. The rev thing is probably the most important thing to know when you're buying one. Latest rev is rev 4 and supports midi fully, rev 3 was more/less note on/off and would hang if given too much info. Rev 1 and 2 ( cream colored motherboard,voiceboard,filterboard ;some combo of the three ) should be avoided. If interested in more complete information pull up Voyetra eight on music machines site.

HideawayStudio wrote:FGtH's Fairlight has been residing in a non working state for many years now in the museum section of my favourite music shop - one of these day's Andy will accept an offer of mine and I can restore it back to working life ...